| Wittenberg has more wins than any other Division III men's basketball program and Bill Brown has more of them than any other Tigers coach. Wittenberg athletics file photo |
By Gordon Mann
D3hoops.com
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon at Wittenberg University and there are lots of places that Bill Brown could be.
Less than 24 hours earlier he had announced that he was stepping down as the winningest coach at the winningest program in Division III men’s basketball history. Wittenberg has 1,715 wins in its century long history and no one has more of them than Brown (483), not including the 60 he gained at two other NCAC schools.
But instead of relaxing somewhere on his first day not in charge of the Tigers’ basketball team, he’s sitting in the University’s athletic center in a red t-shirt, talking about basketball. He is gracious and thoughtful, energetic and curious. He is also honest about why he’s stepping away, explaining it as a product of “life cycles and family dynamics.”
Coach Brown’s wife, Kay, is 10 years younger than he is and ready to start a new career as a nurse practitioner. Brown knows that, sooner or later, his career as a full-time college basketball coach is coming to an end. So, when Kay received an exciting job offer, Brown decided this was the right time to step down.
“It’s time that her life gets to be more on her terms than on my terms, and her job opportunities are better in her old hometown of Indianapolis, just because of the size of the City,” explains Brown. “I love the experiences with the [players], but they can have those same experiences with another guy and I would be missing out on a year of experiences with my wife.”
“It sounds like a really noble thing. It’s not. It’s just that I love her.”
Brown also loves basketball so he’s careful to note with a smile that he’s resigning, not retiring. He’d like to find a job as an assistant coach at a school somewhere near Indianapolis. “I can’t be done with the basketball fix. I love the Xs and Os. I love the youthfulness that being around [players] that age gives you.”
And while he acknowledges that the Tigers are coming off two subpar seasons by their program’s standards, he’s not leaving out of frustration. In fact, he says conference play has been more fun since DePauw arrived in 2011, even if conference titles have been harder to come by since then.
Brown had initially planned to stay one more season at Wittenberg. The Tigers will return five seniors and have a legitimate shot at getting the 17 wins Brown would need to reach 500 at Wittenberg. “We have underachieved [the last two seasons]. That class has underachieved. But I do believe that after a two-year hiatus we can get back to the 20-plus win season and NCAA tournament.”
That’s now up to the Tigers’ upperclassmen and interim head coach Matt Croci, who was a senior at Wittenberg when Brown arrived in Springfield in 1993. In the end the timing was right for Brown to move on, even though it means not just leaving the job he loves but the community he’s called home for decades.
It’s been a great experience at Wittenberg, even if it almost never happened.
Rivals’ shared roots
| Wooster-Wittenberg games, like this one in 2005, draw a full house at Pam Evans Smith Arena. |
Wittenberg and Wooster have one of the best rivalries in Division III basketball, and that rivalry extends farther back than the start of their basketball programs in the early 1900s.
According to an article in Wittenberg’s student paper, a group of English-speaking Lutherans started holding college classes in Wooster, Ohio in the 1840s. In 1844 that school’s leader moved his family west to Springfield and the school itself followed to be closer to the Lutheran populations in neighboring states. That school officially became Wittenberg College in 1845.
Eleven years later a group of Presbyterians also decided to establish a college and considered locating in Springfield. The Lutherans at Wittenberg were dismayed enough by the prospect of splitting resources with this new group that they considered moving out of town. But that was never necessary since the Presbyterians went east to Wooster instead founded Wooster College in 1866.
Like Wittenberg University itself, Brown’s career as a head basketball coach also started in Wooster, Ohio.
When he was an assistant coach at Muskingum in the early 1980s, he was approached by Wooster's head coach Al Van Wie who was closing in on his 300th win but also expected to step away from the sidelines soon after reaching the milestone. So Van Wie recruited Brown to come to Wooster as Scots coach-in-waiting.
In 1982-1983 Brown served as Wooster’s interim head coach and led the Scots to a 13-13 record, similar to what Van Wie had done in the previous three seasons. Brown felt he was in good position to get the head coaching job on a permanent basis and he was the preferred candidate of the selection committee. But, as Brown now describes it, the College changed presidents and the new administration wanted their own guy. So Brown was out.
He landed at Kenyon where the Lords had just eight players for the 1983-1984 season. That first season Kenyon went 1-25. Two seasons later Kenyon was close to .500 and reached the NCAC tournament final where the Lords lost in overtime to eventual national champion Ohio Wesleyan. Brown was named NCAC Coach of the Year for the first time.
In 1989 Brown left Kenyon to take an assistant coaching job under Larry Hunter at Division I Ohio University. Hunter had just arrived at Ohio U after a 13-year career at Wittenberg. When the Wittenberg post opened in 1993, Brown applied and returned to his alma mater.
His first season at Wittenberg went a lot better than his first season at Kenyon. The Tigers went 25-0 in the regular season before losing in overtime of the national semifinals to eventual national champion Lebanon Valley. The Tigers’ leading scorer was Matt Croci, who will take over for Brown as coach next season.
If the twist that diverted Brown from Wooster to Wittenberg isn’t strange enough, there’s a similar story in the opposite direction for Wooster coach Steve Moore.
Moore played on three conference championship teams at Wittenberg in the 1970s and worked as an assistant there under Hunter for five more seasons, including on the 1977 national championship team. But instead of taking over Wittenberg’s program, Moore went to Wooster in 1987 where he has won 692 games in 29 seasons.
Between the two of them, Brown and Moore have won 1,175 games for Wittenberg and Wooster respectively. When Brown is asked which wins he remembers most fondly, he says with a smile, “Every friggin time we beat Wooster.”
To think that it almost didn’t happen for either of them. Or maybe it almost happened for both, but in the opposite places.
Wrong side of a great ending
Bill Brown is on the wrong side of one of the greatest endings in Division III basketball history.
Wittenberg led Virginia Wesleyan late into the second half of the 2006 national championship game. The Tigers held that lead for nearly 39 minutes until Brandon Adair’s layup put Virginia Wesleyan in front for the first time, 54-52 with 80 seconds left to play. Wittenberg reclaimed the lead in the final minute, only to see the Marlins force another tie with 49 seconds left.
Wittenberg still had a chance to capture its third national championship and second as a member of NCAA Division III. The Tigers put the ball in the hands of Dan Russ, who was the Conference player of the year and a second team All-American. Russ started to make a move to the rim and was called for a traveling violation, turning the ball over to Virginia Wesleyan.
| Ton Ton Balenga's game-winning shot in the 2006 national championship game against Wittenberg still looms large in Coach Brown's memory. |
Virginia Wesleyan's Ton Ton Balenga drained a three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left to give the Marlins the lead and, one defensive stop later, the national championship. The Marlins had one of the youngest rosters for a Division III men’s basketball champion. Bill Brown’s Tigers had four seniors, including Russ who crumpled to one knee after the final horn sounded.
"All of a sudden, I felt a hand on my shoulder,” recalled Russ years later. "I heard a voice in my ear. 'Dan, I'm so proud of you. I'm proud of everything you've done for the school.'
"Right then, I felt like everything was lifted. I felt if Coach Brown was strong enough to walk off the court, then so am I."
Don’t confuse strength for lack of feeling. How often does Brown think about that game?
“There is not one day that goes by that I don’t think about how maybe I could’ve impacted a different result from the bench,” Brown says. “Probably not literally every day, but I tell you what – a lot of days.”
This isn’t lip service. Brown recalls the score and game situation for that fateful possession before Balenga’s game winner. He notes that he had one timeout left and wonders if he should’ve used it to set up a play instead of saving it in case he needed to draw up a last-second shot. He says his second mistake was not calling a set offensive play, instead of letting the ball get to Russ and giving him a chance to make a play on his own, as he had so many times that season.
Years later Brown doesn’t blame Russ or the official who called the traveling violation. He wonders what he could’ve done differently.
In a letter to his former players and program supporters announcing his resignation, that loss was the only game Brown referenced specifically. “Often times you have a better chance to shine in defeat and the guys did.”
That loss clearly sticks with Brown, but it doesn’t obscure the overwhelming number of wins, conference championships and NCAA tournament appearances. And neither that loss nor the many wins on the other side of it are the memories that Brown cherishes most.
Brown says that when his former players return to campus, they don’t spend much time rehashing game results. They talk about a road trip where the team bus got stranded in the ice two miles from Case Western. Or the flashy game day suits that assistant coach Artie Taylor sported. Or the time Kenny Brady accidentally knocked Brown on his duff at a Friday night practice before a Saturday afternoon game at Allegheny.
Brown says the highlight of his coaching career is going to the weddings of his former players, “just observing from across the room at the reception – just to watch this group who are there in the weddings of each other, just like they’re still living in the dorm rooms next to each other.”
Life cycles and family dynamics.
That’s what's taking Brown away from Wittenberg and that’s what he'll take with him.